Thor is still having an existential crisis over the nature of the Eternals. He decides that the best way to proceed is to travel back in time to the first visitation of Earth by the Eternals.

He spins his hammer, but instead of traveling to Earth’s past, he ends up stuck in Limbo. What’s more his hammer is missing. He is greeted by the Space Phantom, a minor enemy of the Avengers. Thor has encountered the Space Phantom on two prior occasions, but he does not seem to remember him now. Nonetheless, he warns the Phantom that he considers ever man to be his enemy until proven otherwise.

Limbo is a place beyond time and the Space Phantom’s home. He tells Thor that his people are caught in an endless Time War and that he needs the Thunder God’s help to bring it to an end. In exchange, he will help Thor find his missing hammer.

The Phantom leads Thor to his planet, Phantus, where they are soon attacked by military forces. Thor warns his foes that he isn’t “a God who turns the other cheek” before joining the battle. He crushes a tank with his bare hands, fashioning part of it into a crude hammer. Thor likes hammers.

The Space Phantom takes Thor to a big pit and tells Thor to jump into it. Thor does and finds himself trapped in a nexus between the the timeless and a world where time passes. This is a problem because it means half of him now exists in a realm where it has been 60 seconds since he held his hammer, and half of him doesn’t!

The Avengers have in the past encountered a group of super powered villains known as the Squadron Supreme and have also encountered a group of nominal heroes from a parallel universe known as te Squadron Supreme. The two groups are alternate versions of, er, each other.

Thor has been tracked down by Hyperion, the semi-heroic Hyperion from another universe, not the evil Hyperion native to Thor’s Midgard. Hyperion is making a movie about the time that he and his superpowered teammates enforced the will of a corporate state until the Avengers came to their universe and overthrew that regime. Hyperion wants the Avengers to play themselves in this dramatization.

None of the rest of the Avengers are available. Thor, who of course, has done this sort of thing before, has soured on the notion of being behind the camera after Harris Hobbs recent excursion to Asgard went so poorly. Thor nonetheless agrees to let Hyperion give him a tour of his world.

Thor and Hyperion are followed by the evil Hyperion of Thor’s universe. Complications ensue and Thor is sent back to his world while the evil Hyperion remains at large.

The combined forces of Asgard face Hela and her army. As they fight, Loki enters the fray, without explanation of how he escaped his chains. He soon falls, and afterward, the Midgard Serpent appears.

While the rest of the Asgardians fight for Asgard, Sif convinces Norvell to take her back to Asgard so that he and she might join the fight. They do, although the Midgard Serpent soon claims Norvell’s life. The Odinson reclaims his hammer and uses it to kill the Midard Serpent, which is not supposed to happen.

Having no idea what the hell is going on at this point, Hela calls for a retreat. Her army departs, leaving the Asgardians to marshal their forces and take stock. Norvell is dead, Joey is dead, but now that the danger has passed, there is a flare, and Balder is restored to a state resembling the Odinsleep.

Odin, seemingly back to full strength explains: He knew that Loki and Hela were determined to kick-start Ragnarok and that they had knowledge of Volla’s prophesies. His plan was to confuse them to the point where they could no longer use the prophesies as a road map. Most of the recent battle was an illusion brought forth by Odin, including the presence of Loki and the Midgard serpent, as well as all of the Asgardian fatalities.

Thor, as usual, is angered at the manipulation on the part of his father and prepares to storm off to Midgard. Odin is sick of Thor dividing his time between the two world. He commands Thor to stay in Asgard. Thor defies his father and gets himself banished again. He begs Sif to come with him, reminding her that Jane Foster is trapped inside her, but Sif does not have it in her to defy her king.

Thor returns to Earth with Hobbs and his dead camera crew towed in a big net. Upon his arrival, he says his goodbye to Hobbs and tells the reporter that he has to deal with the Celestials.

In the aftermath of “Red” Norvell’s attack, the trial of Loki concludes with a sentencing phase. Loki is chained to a rock, where a viper will drip mystic venom on his face until Ragnarok, soon as that may be. Sigyn is granted permission to do what she can to ease her husband’s suffering.

Meanwhile, Novell has taken Sif to Alfheim, home of the Ljo’s-Alfar, also known as the Bright Elves. The Bright Elves seem to be a a bunch of diminutive friendly folk. Norvell batters them around as if they were less than nothing.

While Norvell tries to convince Sif to be in love with him, she explains to him how he was able to obtain the power of Thor. Some time ago, Odin became concerned that his son might be on Midgard at a time when Asgard was in danger. So he had a back-up copy of Thor’s essence made and stored in his gloves and belt. Loki gave unwitting Norvell the instructions to unlock Thor and imprint the Thunder God’s essence o’ertop of himself.

Thor fights the Invaders. The combined might of the Invaders are not enough to go toe-to-toe with Thor, but they do what they can to keep Stalin safe.

In Germany, Dr. Olsen has a heart attack and dies. Hans, who is actually Doctor Doom operating under an assumed name, secretly transmits the ravings of Hitler to Thor. Hitler is sufficiently hateful and murderous that Thor abandons his mission, but not before accidentally giving lightning powers to Union Jack. Thor heads back to Asgard, but for some reason decides to wipe the memories of the Invaders before he does so.

Odin is weakened from losing a sizeable portion of the Odinforce, but nonetheless decides to put his son, Loki on trial.

Before the trial begins, Loki advises Red Norvell to don Thor’s Belt of Strength in the temple of the Palace of Thor, where he can both find and wear Thor’s Iron Gloves, and finally, to bathe in the fire of Geirrodur.

Norvell does all of this, and then he crashes the trial. He is now bigger, beardier, and dressed in Asgardian raiment. He claims to be the “real Thor”. He is brash and brutish and picks a fight with Thor. As they fight, Norvell grabs Mjolnir and wrests it from Thor’s grasp!!

Red beats Thor to a pulp with Mjolnir and is prepared to kill Thor when Joey attempts to intervene. Red accidentally kills Joey. This gives him only slight pause. He threatens to kill Thor if Sif will not come away with him. When that doesn’t work, he threatens to destroy the Odinshield and thus bring about the end of the world.

Faced with the end of the world Sif yields to this creep. Norvell, still holding Thor’s hammer, grabs Sif and they depart. Yuck.

A large assemblage of Avengers, both former and current, have been caught up in a complicated war of wills between Korvac and a cosmic entity known as “The Collector.” Korvac has killed the Collector, but these Avengers, Thor among their number, remain aboard his spaceship, currently orbiting Earth.

Investigating the environs of their now-deceased foe, the Avengers discover that the Collector owned a time machine, and had been using it to snatch Thor out of the time-stream so that he could assist the Avengers, despite his being preoccupied with Asgardian matters. The reasons for this were complicated and opaque, but after each adventure, Thor would be returned to his own point in the time stream with his memory removed.

During World War II, Adolf Hitler tasks a pair of scientists with creating a a device capable of teleporting Thor from Asgard to Germany. The scientists, Dr. Olsen, and his assistant Hans, who’s face is entirely covered in bandages do what Hitler asks.

Hitler convinces Thor to fight for the Nazis, who he presents as the descendants of the Vikings. “Side by side, Son of Odin and Son of Schickelgruber stride from the chamber–”. Hitler ask Thor to assassinate Joseph Stalin. Thor agrees.

During this time, there was a team of American, British, and Atlantean heroes that fought for the Allies known as the Invaders. Their number included Captain America, Namor, an android called “the Human Torch”, Spitfire, and Union Jack. This group of heroes happen to be delivering an experimental armored tank directly to Stalin when Thor attacks!

This issue also makes clear that Thor speaks in Asgardian, not English, and that some manner of magic provides translation between he and whomever he is speaking with.

Many of the stories to feature Thor outside of the main magazine have proven difficult to pin down when they happen in relationship to those stories, which tend to leave little room for downtime. This story does not have that problem, explicitly taking place in the middle of The Mighty Thor #275. This issue features the encounter between Thor and Mimir that was alluded to in that issue.

All the recent hubub regarding the end of the world has Thor thinking about how the world began. The Asgardians have legends about such things, but so do the Olympians, as well as the mortals on Earth. What about evolution? It seems that he does not remember that he himself gave life to the first humans on Midgard.

Thor is musing on all of these topics, but they are not what he asks Mimir about. Instead, he wants to know if Ragnarok is going to take out Midgard when it goes, or if only Asgard is to be wiped out. The full scope is not entirely clear.

Mimir tells Thor that he should already know how Earth is to be destroyed, but that he has forgotten. Mimir then cites the events of Thor Annual #5, which goddammit, means I have to square that story with the other Thor storytelling that has already transpired.

At any rate, a thousand years ago, Thor was wandering around, far away from Asgard, when he stumbled upon a prisoner locked away in the middle of nowhere. The prisoner said that its name was Dromedan, Master of Minds and Men, and that if Thor freed it, he would be granted wealth, women, and worlds to conquer. Thor was ensorcelled by the prisoner, and tempted to free it, but he ultimately resisted and left it imprisoned.

Afterward, Thor went to Mexico and tried to get the natives to worship him. This was met with hostility. He soon ran into four colorfully dressed white men calling themselves “Eternals.” These men, Druig, Virako, Ajak, and Valkin, asked to parlay with Thor, away from the “primitives.”

The Eternals explained that eons ago, powerful space gods known as Celestials had visited Midgard and performed breeding experiments on the local ape life to create three different breeds of intelligent life: The Humans, The Eternals, and the Deviants. At some point later, the Celestials wiped out their creations, forcing what people remained to rebuild their civilizations from scratch. Now, the Eternals somehow sense that the Celestials are preparing to return for a third time.

Thor takes all of this at face value, but is shaken. He asks if the first humans on Midgard were named “Aske and Embla”. They do not know. This leaves room for multiple interpretations. Perhaps the Celestials actually only created the Deviants and the Eternals, while Thor created the humans with a branch of Yggrdasill. Perhaps Yggrdasill served as some sort of catalyst for the Celestials.

It is also worth noting that the Eternals perceive Asgard and Olympus as existing in parallel universes to their own.

At any rate, Thor helps his new friends the Eternals subjugate the Aztecs. They scare the humans into worshiping them so that these “primitives” might be “civilized”. After a while, Thor gets bored and takes off for a while, before coming back and helping his buddies give the Mayans the same treatment.

Eventually, Druig turns traitor and releases Dromedan, who is a member of another terrestrial sub-race known as the Mutates. He also enlists the service of Tutinax the Mountain Mover, who is also a Mutate. Druig wants to enslave humans, not just civilize them. And so he and his allies fight Thor and his allies.

Virako dies in the fight. But in the end Thor’s friends win the fight. Afterward, Valkin uses mind powers to erase Thor’s memory of ever encountering the Eternals. It is not clear why, but this encounter was part of what the Eternals refer to as the Third Cataclysm.

Now, a thousand years later, Thor remembers. Mimir informs him that the Celestials now walk the Earth so that they might judge it in fifty years time, and that depending on how they judge it, they may wipe out civilization again. Mimir implies, but does not outright state, that this will be the end of Midgard, not Ragnarok.

After a frustrated and despondent Thor leaves, Mimir takes a moment to delight in the secret knowledge that “The destiny of Thor be e’er entwined with that of his adoptive world– for reasons only Odin and Mimir do know! And Odin, poor soul, be pledged ne’er to tell!”

Balder is dead! Out of desperation, Odin sends an Asgardian by the name of Hermod the Swift to Hel to see if anything can be done to restore Balder. The Allfather lends Hermod his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir toward that purpose.

Odin tasks various Asgardians with protecting the Realm. Amongst them he tasks Sigyn, the wife that Loki has apparently had all this time, with guiding the aim of blind archer Hodor. She clearly states that while she loves Loki, she would defend Asgard even if it meant turning on him.

Thor briefly steps away to consult with Mimir.

Harris Hobbs and his team report on the events, but what’s more, Hobbs, who did a lot of studying of Norse mythology before his trip, has been predicting events before they have been happening. Not because of prophetic visions, but because things are matching what he read of Mythology.

Red Norvell hits on Sif some more, and as angry as that makes her, she refrains from slaying him. Butthurt, Norvell tells himself that Sif only likes Thor better than him because Thor is stronger than him. Loki offers to help him with his girl problems.

Loki takes Norvell to Jotunheim, land of the Giants but meets with an assemblage of Trolls and Dwarves. Geirrodur and Ulik are conspicuously absent. Thor somehow tracks them down, and Loki attacks his brother with what he claims to be very axe that Odin used to slay Ymir, eons ago. Since Odin did not slay Ymir, but eternally trapped him in a ring of fire, it seems clear that Loki is lying.

The two brothers battle while Norvell records the fight. Some time prior, Loki weaved an enchantment on Thor so that were he to enter Jotunheim, he would find his strength halved. Thor is no stranger to having his strength halved, but finds he need his full strength and so he uses Mjolnir to summon his Belt of Strength, last seen 184 issues prior. With it, he is able to defeat Loki as well as the trickster’s horde of Trolls and Dwarves.

Thor takes Norvell back to Asgard. As Thor carries his unconscious brother, he asks Norvell to hold his belt.

When Hermod arrives in Hel, Hela tells him that Balder can be revived if all the world would weep for Balder’s passing. It comes to pass that all things do weep, all save for a Giantess named Thokk, who proclaims that Balder never did nothin for her. This is exactly what Hobbs said would happen, although he adds that there are rumors that Thokk is actually Loki in disguise.

Balder cannot be revived. In order to forestall his full death, Odin sacrifices some of his Odinpower, siphoning it into the fallen god’s body in order to bring Balder to a state of Odinsleep, surrounded by an Odinshield. This will perhaps stave off Ragnarok, but at the cost of weakening the All-Father.

This issue also makes it explicit that time passes at a different rate on Asgard than it does elsewhere. This, perhaps, can account for Odin’s difficulties with understanding time.

Also, Odin has started letting a pair of wolves follow him around wherever he goes.

“What If?” is a comic book magazine that reveals how events would have played out for the superheroes of Marvel, if major events had unfolded differently. This issue examines what would have happened if it Doctor Donald Blake had brought along Nurse Jane Foster on the fateful vacation where Blake originally found Mjolnir.

In this version of events, Blake and Foster are together when the Stone Men From Saturn attack, and after Blake drops his walking stick, it is Foster and not Blake who ends up trapped in a cave with the gnarled stick that is actually Mjolnir in disguise. She picks it up and taps it on the ground, initiating the transformation into Thor that was intended for Blake. Evidently, despite the elaborate scheming of Odin designed to turn Blake into Thor, Jane Foster is herself worthy of the mantle of Thor and so she transforms into a female incarnation of Thor.

Jane, much like Blake in his early days as Thor, has none of the memories or knowledge of Thor. She decides to call herself by the arguably more feminine name of “Thordis.” Thordis makes short work of the Stone Men from Saturn, rescuing Blake.

In the weeks to come, Thordis fights the same threats that Thor had faced in his early crimefighting career and handles herself as well, if not better than Thor had in the default timeline. Not needing a walking-stick, she has carved the stick into a wooden hair-brush that she keeps in her purse.

Eventually, Thordis is summoned to Asgard. Odin is shocked and appalled to discover that it is a mortal woman that has come to wield Mjolnir, and there is enough wiggle room in the text to say that his concern is not over her gender, but over the fact that she is a random non-Blake mortal. Odin banishes Thordis from Asgard.

Sif takes this turn of events poorly. She loves Thor and is now worried that he will never return to Asgard. She travels to Midgard and proceeds to seduce Doctor Donald Blake, who has drifted apart from Nurse Foster ever since she began her career as a superhero. Over time, Blake and Sif fall in love. Sif uses magic to heal Blake’s leg.

Eventually, the Mangog attempts to unsheath the Odinsword. In the face of Ragnarok both Sif and Thordis return to Asgard. Sif allows Blake to accompany her. Thordis fights the Mangog before waking Odin from his Odinsleep with Mjolnir, allowing the All-Father to undo the Mangog.

In the aftermath, Odin forces Thordis to give Blake her mystic hammer, restoring the doctor to his natural state as Thor. However, Jane has won the respect of Odin and he gifts her with the godhead. He then starts putting the moves on her, and eventually the two are wed. It’s pretty damn weird.

After taunting Thor with the prospect of the twilight of the Gods, Loki transforms into a rat and scurries behind a statue of Odin. Thor lifts the statue in order to get at his brother, despite the fact that lifting the likeness of Odin is sacrilege. It is while holding this statue that Odin returns astride Sleipnir, his eight-legged horse.

Odin has brought with him a blind warrior named Hoder. More strikingly, after all these binocular years, the All-Father now wears an eyepatch. Thor and Balder somewhat calm down Odin, who is angry about the statue and the mortals and Loki.

Thor wants to kill Loki in order to prevent Ragnarok. Odin says Thor can’t. Odin is surprised that Loki has been restored to Godhood. Loki says Odin can not punish him again, and that Odin knows the reasons why. Odin, who normally would have plenty to be absurdly angry about, takes it all in relative stride, for he knows they face the end of all things.

Recently, Odin’s ravens, Hugin and Munin, warned him that the time of Ragnarok might be approaching. Odin visited Mimir, seeking knowledge of how to prevent such an Armageddon. Mimir asked that Odin pay a price for such knowledge.

Unlike the price Mimir recently asked Thor to pay, the price demanded of Odin is actually costly: his right eye. Mimir hates Odin, for at the dawn of Asgard, Odin was responsible for Mimir’s beheading. Having taken petty payment, Mimir instructs Odin to travel to Hel to consult with Volla, the long-dead prophetess.

Odin finds Volla and asks her how, if possible, Ragnarok can be avoided. She tells him that Ragnarok is inevitable, due to Odin’s long-ago decree that the world will eventually need “fiery cleansing.” She suggests that it may be delayed if Balder can be protected, for his death shall signal the beginning of the end.

This is strange, for in the vision of Ragnarok that she saw, as depicted in issue #200, Balder fought alongside Thor in the battle of Ragnarok. Either her vision of the future has changed, or she is lying.

While in Hel, Odin encounters Hela. It is well-established that there are multiple afterlifes, and that the afterlife for the Aesir is Valhalla. This is now slightly reframed, as Hela is identified as the ruler of the Realm of the Dead known as Hel, and that she has semi-recently annexed Valhalla, something that Odin would take issue with, had he not more pressing matters. On the way back to Asgard, Odin happens upon Hoder, a blind wandering god, whom Odin offers to bring back to Asgard. He does so.

Soon after Odin finishes his tale, Sif and Hildegarde return from a seperate mission, tasked to them by the All-Father: They have brought back the long-absent Goddesses of Asgard. It is unknown where they were, or why they left, or how much of the female population of Asgard had been away while others such as Sif, Krista, and Hildegarde had remained.

Amongst the returning Goddesses is Frigga, the wife of Odin. Frigga shows a maternal affection for Thor, but in an aside, Hobbs explains to his cameraman Roger “Red” Norvell, that he doubts that Frigga is Thor’s mother; that according to mythology his mother was a giantess named “Jord.”

After Thor and Sif exchange a warm greeting, Odin, Frigga, and Thor depart to discuss the end of the world and also the presence of mortals in Asgard. Loki is not invited.

While they do that, the rest of the cast has a moment of downtime. Red clumsily hits on Sif and Balder tells him to fuck off. Balder then tells everyone that he is not worried about dying because as long as he remains in Asgard, he is invulnerable to any non-mistletoe thing. In his telling, it is Frigga that arranged this, but he likely misremembers, for it was Odin that made such happen.

Thanks to a psychic suggestion from Loki, Balder suggests that everybody throw their weapons at him. All the Asgardians do, despite Hobbs’ protests that they are being very stupid. Loki offers Hoder a special bow, with which Hodor uses to fire an arrow straight into Balder’s chest, fatally!

Captain Marvel is the formal name of Mar-Vell, a Kree warrior with cosmic super powers not unlike those of Warlock. He posesses the Nega-Bands, two bracelets that give him a connection with the Negative Zone

Mar-Vell has come to make the Earth his home, and is a sometime ally of the Avengers, and a friend of Rick Jones. Recently, Captain Marvel combined forces with the Avengers and Warlock to defeat the mad Titan Thanos, preventing him from killing countless lives. Both Warlock and Thanos died in the battle.

Mar-Vell has become feverish, and Rick has taken him to see Doctor Donald Blake. Blake can do nothing for him, and in mid-examination the Kree bursts out of Blake’s office. Blake transforms into Thor and gives pursuit.

When Thor catches up with Mar-Vell, the delirious hero begs Thor to kill him. Before Thor is willing to take that step, he demands an explanation. Mar-Vell explains that before he died, Thanos tampered with the Sun of Earth and the other planets in the Solar System. It is causing the cosmic physiology of Mar-Vell to overload , which will cause a chain reaction leading to the destruction of the entire universe.

Thor has a hunch and hurls Mjolnir at Marvel’s Nega Bands. It strikes both of them, opening a portal to the Negative Zone. Such are the strange properties of the Negative Zone, that Marvel’s excess energy is sucked into the Negative Zone, creating a new star. Afterward, both Mar-Vell and the Sun seem to be fine.

Starting with this issue, the introductory text that began with issue #248 has been subtly changed to:

“When Dr. DONALD BLAKE strikes his wooden walking-stick upon the ground, it becomes the mystic mallet MJOLNIR – and the lame physician is transformed into the Norse God of Thunder, Master of the Storm, Lord of the Living Lightning– and heir to the throne of eternal Asgard… Stan Lee Presents: The Mighty Thor!”

When Thor last crossed paths with Harris Hobbs, he used hypnosis to make the reporter forget what he knew about Thor and about Asgard. When Doctor Donald Blake last crossed paths with Hobbs, that hypnosis had held. However, for all of that time, the mortal’s memories of Asgard would haunt him at night, and eventually he sought out a hypnotherapist who was able to restore the reporter’s memories.

Now a television reporter, and desperate for a story, Hobbs begs Thor to be allowed to take a camera crew to Asgard. Thor promises to ask Odin, but considers getting a “yes” to be highly unlikely. Thor departs, and soon afterword a mysterious stranger makes himself known to Hobbs, asking to hear more about his dreams.

Hobbs tells the stranger about a vision he has been having, of a time long ago when a young Thor and a tragically hatless Hymir went fishing. What Thor did not tell his friend was that he was fishing for Jormungand, the one and only Migard Serpent, destined to one day slay Thor at the time of Ragnarok. Hymir cut the enchanted fishing line when he realized what Thor had done and Thor stormed off as a result.

The telling of this story somehow manages to restore the memory and strength of the stranger, who is, of course, Loki. Loki offers to take Hobbs and his camera crew to Asgard, which is an offer the mortal eagerly accepts.

Meanwhile, Thor visits his friend Tony Stark’s corporate office to pick up all that remains of F.A.U.S.T: a giant adamantium cube. He plans to take it to Asgard for safekeeping. Once he has the cube, he is visited by an illusion appearing to be the Midgard Serpent. He attempts to fight it, but returns to Asgard once he realizes the serpent is not real.

In Asgard, he is eager to see Sif once again, only to be informed that she and Odin have departed on a unknown mission, leaving the Warriors Three in charge. Before the matter can be discussed further, a panel in F.A.U.S.T. pops open and Hobbs and his camera crew, Red and Joey, pop out along with Loki.

Loki claims that Hobbs’ vision is a precursor to the coming of Ragnarok and that it is the nearness of the end times that has restored Loki. The time of Ragnarok, claims Loki, is here!

On the streets of Midgard, Thor stumbles upon some kids and ends up telling them a story of his youth. He tells a tale of Asgard, one that takes place some time after he has earned his hammer.

Young Thor and Loki were lost in a forest, far from Asgard, when they stumble upon a giant, large enough to hold both Asgardians in the palm of his hand. The giant’s name is Skyrmir, and he tells the brothers that they are in the kingdom of Utgard.

Skyrmir is returning to the the Hall of Utgard, and Thor and Loki decide to follow him out of the forest. That night, the Giant offers his tiny companions food from his bag and then promptly falls asleep. To Thor and Loki’s frustration, they discover that they cannot open the giant sack. Frustrated, Thor lashes out at Skyrmir, striking him with a thunderbolt. The giant wakes only briefly, having barely felt anything.

Later, they arrive in Utgardhall, a city scaled for people the size of Skyrmir. Thor and Loki quickly earn the attention of Utgard, the ruler of Utgardhall. He challenges the gods to a series of five challenges. If they win, he will give them directions to their home, if they fail, they will be banished to the dungeons.

In turn they fail each challenge: First there is an eating contest, a race, and a drinking contest. Then the challenges get more insulting as Thor is challenged to lift a simple housecat, and when he fails that one, is asked to defeat an old crone at wrestling. This too he fails.

At this time, Utgard reveals that they have been tricked all along. That each step of the way, they were the victims of illusions and enchantments. Thor was not lifting a cat, but the Midgard Serpent. The crone was actually Elli, the very personification of Aging.

Having revealed the deception, Utgard commends the Asgardians for not surrendering, declaring them worthy to rule the cosmos. He then departs, and strips away the illusion that was Utgardhall itself.

The kids thank Thor for the story and depart. As they go, one says to Thor, “The Force be with you”. To this, Thor replies, “And with thee, lad… whate’er thou dost mean.”

It is at this point that Harris Hobbs runs up to Thor and declares his intent to create a TV special about the Norse Gods, filmed on location in Asgard.

Thor stumbles upon Spider-Man and an X-Man by the name of Havok fighting a giant calling himself the Living Monolith. Thor helps the heroes beat the villain. As he departs, he tells Spider-Man to “know that the son of Odin shall e’er count thee among those he calls his friends.”

Thor, that is to say, the real Thor, is helping his comrades in the Avengers fight Ultron. The nature of the seemingly false Thor remains unknown.

Joining the Avengers is Ms. Marvel. Ms. Marvel is a human who’s DNA has been merged with that of a member of the alien race known as the Kree. This fusion has granted her superhuman abilities. Ms. Marvel is both a a superhero and a liberated woman. One of her abilities is precognitive visions, and she has recently had a vision that compels her to help the Avengers in their fight against Ultron.

The conflict against Ultron leads the Avengers to a church. Thor is uncomfortable entering the church. He explains that some Christians consider his very existence to be an affront to their belief in a single supreme deity.

This church has for some reason been chosen as Ultron’s lair. Ultron wishes to murder his father, and imprint a robot with the personality of his father’s wife and then to fuck that robot. Ultron, not one for subtlety, names his would-be robot bride “Jocasta.”

Jocasta awakens and finds herself deeply conflicted between her programmed love for Ultron, and how deeply skeeved out she is by him. Confused, she tries to murder him. She fails, but this distracts Ultron long enough for the Scarlet Witch to crack open his armor. Once this happens, Thor uses Mjolnir to suck out all of Ultron’s life force before ejecting it into the cosmos.

After conferring with the Avengers and with an intelligence operative named Nick Fury, Thor uses Mjolnir to teleport himself and Iron Man inside of F.A.U.S.T., now in orbit around Earth. The two of them destroy it.

Thor finds himself unable to retrieve his hammer before his time runs out. Fortunately, his transformation back to Blake happens unseen. As Blake, he tells Blastaar that Thor went thattaway, and Blastaar departs. However, by the time Blake makes his way back to his reverted walking stick, it has been snatched up by a youth proclaiming himself to be the President of a group of toughs known as the Street Kings.

Blake politely asks for his stick back, and gets hit upside the head for his trouble. He grabs the stick and, without tapping it against anything at all, is transformed back into Thor. Perhaps the contact against his head closed the circuit of transformation.

Upon witnessing this transformation, the Street Kings take off. Blastaar has already made himself scarce, but Stilt-Man remains, and he tells Thor what he knows.

Thor visits his teammate in the Avengers, Tony Stark. Thor tells Tony what he knows about Blastaar’s activities, and Stark uses a computer to cross-reference the clues and determine that Blastaar’s master is F.A.U.S.T., the living factory.

Blastaar has become convinced that F.A.U.S.T. is a being of enough power to be worth serving. His master has promised to make him King of the Negative Zone in exchange for his service. He gives F.A.U.S.T. the isotopes that Stilt-Man stole.

Thor heads straight to the factory and fights Blastaar. When it becomes clear that he will not win the fight, Blastaar retreats to a portal to the Negative Zone created by F.A.U.S.T. However, he has been double crossed, and Blastaar is disintegrated instead of teleported.

Meanwhile, F.A.U.S.T. has reconfigured itself into a orbiting death satellite and launched itself into orbit.

After Thor’s recent realization that that he was slumming by participating in the Avengers, he reduced his role to that of an associate member, to be called upon only in times of emergency. There have been some other membership shakeups, and the current full-time Avengers roster now consists of Iron Man, Captain America, The Wasp, The Scarlet Witch, The Vision, and the Beast (formerly of the X-Men).

Wonder Man, a reformed villain with a brief former stint as an Avenger who is also the human template for the Vision, has been returned from the dead via vague arcane means. He now serves as a member of the Avengers although he has not been officially made an active member.

Since taking his leave of absence, Thor has seemingly dropped by to assist the Avengers on three separate occasions. However, he now arrives at the Avengers Mansion, claiming to have never done any such thing. He is very confused. It seems that the Thor that has been fighting alongside the Avengers as of late has been an Impostor.

Thor has visited a newsstand where he helps himself to a newspaper and proceeds to leaf through it, although he explains to the news vendor, “Lacking suitable coin of the realm, I cannot repay thee for the use of thy…”

Almost immediately after he finishes his paper, Thor changes into Blake. Blake immediately gives a homeless woman a dollar. Thor reads newspapers as a god so that he doesn’t have to pay for them.

Blastaar is a brutish warrior with the power to make things explode by pointing at them. He was once accidentally released from the Negative Zone of Sub-Space by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four an let loose on Earth. Sometime later he was killed by the X-Men before being resurrected by two years of steady dosage of Gamma Rays administered by a mad scientist named Professor Preston Pentecost who wanted Blastaar to kill a sentient factory named “F.A.U.S.T.”. Before Blastaar could kill the factory, the Incredible Hulk wrapped him in an unbreakable metal known as “adamantium” and threw him in the ocean.

The Stilt-Man is a costumed criminal who uses a suit of armor containing hydraulic telescoping legs to commit crimes. Recently in a battle with a hero named Black Goliath, his armor was destroyed, and he was imprisoned. Now he has been broken out of prison by Blastaar and provided a brand new suit of stilt-armor, this new one made of adamantium. It is unclear how Blastaar came to leave the bottom of the ocean, but he is now working for an unseen master.

As payment for his freedom and for his new armor, Stilt-Man is tasked with stealing a package containing unknown contents out of a helicopter in mid-flight. Stilt-Man finds that reasonable, and so he agrees to the job. When he grabs the goods, he uses stupifying gas to knock out the helicopter pilots. As the helicopter plummets, it gains the attention of Dr. Blake, who becomes Thor once again, and catches the helicopter.

Thor then finds defeats Stilt-Man. As he approaches his fallen foe, Blastaar suckerpunches Thor with an explosive burst, causing Thor to drop his hammer and start the sixty-second clock.

Meanwhile, on Asgard, the Warriors Three have captured the team of Snaykar, Magrat and Kroda.

An unhappy Don Blake is walking along the streets of New York,when a cop asks him if he is, in fact, Doctor Blake. The cop asks Blake to contact his friend Thor, and ask him to meet with the Commissioner of Police. It is unclear if the police were sent to search for Blake, or if the passing officer happened to recognize the famous surgeon and decided to ask him for some help.

Whatever the case, Blake becomes Thor once again and meets the Commissioner. At this point It seems without a shadow of a doubt that the police are not going to arrest Thor. Whether the charges against him have been formally or informally dropped is unclear, but if the Commisioner of Police is consulting with the God of Thunder, Thor will not be held accountable for his criminal acts.

The Commissioner introduces Thor to Bennett Barlow, the brother of Damocles. Bennett helps Thor track down Damocles, who has completed his Cobalt Cannon, which is a funky looking tank. Unfortunately, it was built with synthetic cobalt, which is unstable. The cannon is really a bomb, and when Damocles refuses to surrender, Bennett fatally shoots his brother. Thor throws the bomb into the sky where it safely detonates.

With Odin returned to the Throne, it is a time for regrouping. The Recorder returns to the Colonizers, and Karnilla likewise departs. Loki is put on trial and as punishment, Odin strips him of his memories and of his godhood, sending Loki to live on Midgard as he once did with his other son. Kroda, Magrat and Snaykar remain free. Odin tasks the Warriors Three with tracking them down.

Thor desires to return to Earth. He discusses the matter with Sif, who has found a snazzy new outfit. He tells her that he wishes to go to Midgard without her. Says he, “Though the heart of Thor is ever thine, the spirit of Don Blake cries out for release, and I must heed its call alone!” As Thor has no interest in being Don Blake, it can be assumed that the part of him that is Blake is literally crying out for release from within his psychic prison.
Sif gives Thor his space, but the matter of Jane Foster is not discussed. If Sif stays of Asgard, it would seem Jane is doomed to non-existence, and were she to return to Earth, it would be the Lady Sif who was denied a life. What amount of responsibility to Jane does Sif carry? Also, Thor wasted no time in getting romantic with Jane when Sif seemed dead, now that she is back, Thor claims she has his heart. None of these matters is discussed.

Does Jane have any friends, any family? No one was seen to visit her in the hospital when she was dying. Presumably she had a job before leaving on the Odin Quest. Are there people on Earth searching for her, presuming her dead?

Thor returns to Earth, shocked to discover that he has been gone for over a year. Blake had just started up a new practice last time he was on Earth. That practice’s office has been bulldozed in his absence. Blake has no close friends. His girlfriend is trapped in another woman’s body in another plane of existence. Blake takes a moment to contemplate if existing still makes sense.

Blake decides to start a new chapter of his life. He visits his old college mentor, Dr. Jacob Wallaby, looking for work. He tells Wallaby that he needs something that he can drop at a moments notice for an indefinite length of time. Wallaby agrees to set Blake up with some unpaid work at a free clinic. He comments, “I’ve never quite understood you, my boy! Your skill as a surgeon surpasses any other I’ve ever seen, yet I’ve always had the feeling mere medicine wasn’t enough for you…”

Before they can discuss it further, a schmuck calling himself “Damocles” and some other thugs attack the hospital they are at, stealing some synthetic cobalt. Blake departs, changes into Thor and gives chase. Damocles escapes, intending to build a Cobalt Cannon.

Thor is in Manhattan when he stumbles upon a group of terrorists preparing to blow up a nuclear reactor in the name of some unspecified cause. Thor stops the villains, but suddenly he and the nuclear reactor are both teleported away.

What happens to the reactor is unclear, but Thor wakes up floating in space. Without any magical conveyance, Thor is frozen by the cold void of space, although it does not kill him.

In the 31st Century, the Guardians of the Galaxy are a ragtag spaceship crew, fighting for the betterment of Earth. They consist of Yondu, Charlie 27, Martinex, Niki, Starhawk, and Vance Astro. They stumble upon Thor floating in space and rescue him.

Once onboard, Thor agrees to help the Guardians in their fight against a villain named Korvac. Korvac has a plan that involves blowing up Earth’s sun. Thor and the Guardians fight Korvac and his allies. They manage to destroy Korvac’s base, and in defeat, Korvac teleports away. Astro uses a time machine that Korvac apparently owned to send Thor back to the 20th century.

When Karnilla realizes that Balder’s spirit is powering the Destroyer, she wastes no time in teleporting to the location of Balder’s body, which she steals away from the Trickster God. She takes the body to the Destroyer, intending to remove Balder’s essence from the Destroyer and put it back where it belongs.

Unfortunately, Loki follows Karnilla, and in the battle that ensues, the Norn Queen is knocked unconscious. The part of the Destroyer that is Balder senses this, and turns its attention away from thrashing Thor with Kzippa particles in order to attack Loki. Panicked, Loki returns the essence of Balder to its body.

Loki, then intends to enter the Destroyer himself, but before he can, Thor enters it. The Thor-powered Destroyer is about to kill Loki when Odin arrives, and commands the Destroyer to kneel before him. The part of the Destroyer that is Thor hears and yields.

While most of the cast had been fighting the Destroyer, the Warriors Three followed the team of Kroda, Magrat and Snaykar to the secret cavern where Loki had hidden Odin. They defeat the villains, and free the All-Father from the Mists of Morpheus that Loki had been using to indefinitely prolong the Odinsleep. Once freed of the mists, Odin awoke and was thus able to end the Destroyer fight and reassume his rulership of Asgard. Odin frees Thor’s spirit from the Destroyer and father and son embrace.

Thor fights the Destroyer, which Loki stole from Galactus. Even with most of his friends pitching in, he is no match for his foe. Hildegarde remains conspicuously absent from the action.

Meanwhile, Karnilla, riding a dragon, is denied entrance to Asgard by a pair of guardsmen named Brolthar and Enok, so she turns them into toads and enters the city. She attempts to assist Thor but when her magic strikes the Destroyer, she realizes the truth: The Destroyer’s current host is none other than Balder!

Loki has grabbed the throne of Asgard yet again, and this time he backs up his grab with a well-forged legal document from a cask bearing the Odin-Seal. The scroll within the cask states that in the case of Odin’s incapacitation, whichever of Odin’s sons can first sit on the Throne shall rule the realm. Given that both Thor and Loki have repeatedly been banished from Asgard, and given that Odin enters the Odinsleep once a year, on top of his tendency to mysteriously disappear, one would think he would have established a clear, well-known rule of succession by now.

Instead, we have Loki, apparently the rightful ruler of Asgard. This time, he has surrounded himself with lackeys. In addition to the reluctant support of the Enchantress and the Executioner (both of whom, one would think would still be sore about Loki’s role in their initial banishment) he has also enlisted the aid of his old friends Kroda the Duelist and Magrat the Schemer and brought Snaykar the Skulker into the fold.

Loki bids his brother and friends to depart from his presence. Thor and his friends do, and split into two teams. The Warriors Three are tasked with protecting Odin, while Thor, Sif and the Recorder search for Balder.

The Warriors Three find Odin missing from his bedchambers. They follow the trail left by his abductors, which leads them to Executioner and the Enchantress, deep within the bowels of Asgard, near the Troll-built generators that power the city. They fight. Due to subtle manipulation on the part of Loki, the Enchantress and the Executioner plummet to their seeming death at the end of the fight.

Thor, Sif and the Recorder have been told that Balder left Asgard with Karnilla, accompanying her back to her domain. They head out that way, and hve to fight their way past a pair of Storm Giants to get there. Sif is oddly frightened of one of them, but Thor kills them.

When they arrive at the home of the Norn Queen, Karnilla claims not to know what became of Balder. Thor believes Karnilla when it comes to matters of Balder.

It turns out that Loki has used his magic to erase the Norn Queen’s memory of Balder’s capture and her defeat, that Loki has been manipulating the memories of all the people of Asgard, that Balder is locked in the dungeons of Asgard, and that it wasn’t really Thor that attacked Balder.

Thor returns to Loki, full of bluster. Loki simply vanishes. The Destroyer appear before Thor.

The Asgardians do battle against the Odin-Force given form, and it is Valiant Volstagg that wins the day. Volstagg finds himself able to blast the being with powerful energy from his hands and he fights the being to the point of exhaustion, at which point it dissipates. It seems Odin was able to transfer a portion of the Odin-Force into Volstagg before expiring. Volstagg now transfers that same force back to Odin, restoring him to life.

During the course of the fight, the Soul-Survivors’ Energy Siphon was destroyed, and it seems that they now have no way of capturing the energy their world needs to survive. Also, it seems that while the Soul-Survivors were able to disenchant Mjolnir when they were in control of the Odin-Force, now that Odin is free and alive, the hammer is enchanted once again.

The Asgardians (and their Rigelian friend) depart. Odin has been weakened by these recent events and slips into the Odinsleep once again. The crew of the Starjammer return to Asgard only to find Loki sitting on the throne, flanked by the Enchantress and the Executioner!

The Soul-Survivors’ world is known as Templeworld. Their enclosed planet, orbiting a star that emits darkness, is powered by an engine that converts the divinity of a god into energy. The people of Templeworld sucked dry their original god long ago, and have powered their world through a long succession of now-dead shanghaied gods. The space graveyard that the Starjammer passed through is the aftermath of this grizzly business.

Odin is the current source of power for these people. The imprisoned Asgardians are tended to by a pair of Soul-Survivors, K’rll and N’gll, and they are already preparing to replace Odin with the three new Immortals they have captured, for the All Father is near death.

Odin dies, and his oddly-familiar final words to Thor are “forgive them, my son for they know not what they do.” His father’s death fills Thor with the Warrior’s Madness. He shatters his restraints as his friends arrive to free him. Sif and Fandral are loosed in no time, and sensing the shifting tide, K’rll takes the remaining Odin-Force that has been harvested from the All-Father and gives it a corporeal form, with which to kill Thor.

Meanwhile, back on Asgard, Thor sucker punches Balder and Karnilla and knocks them both out.